Geisinger Health Entities to Pay $450,000 in EEOC Disability and Retaliation Lawsuit

PHILADELPHIA – Geisinger Health, Geisinger Health System Foundation and Geisinger Wyoming Valley Medical Center, collectively a Pennsylvania health care system, will pay $450,000 and provide other equitable relief to settle a disability discrimination lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the federal agency announced today.

According to the EEOC’s lawsuit, Geisinger engaged in policies and practices since January 2018 denying reasonable accommodations to workers with disabilities, including job-protected leave and reassignment without competition. Geisinger’s policies limited job-protected leave to a specified duration and required employees returning from leave to apply and compete for their own positions if vacant, or compete and be selected for another position within two months of their return to work. The EEOC charged that during this process, Geisinger would manipulate vacancies and job postings to interfere with the efforts of employees with disabilities attempting to secure their prior position or obtain a new one.

“Disability discrimination has no place in the workplace,” said Debra Lawrence, regional attorney for EEOC’s Philadelphia District Office. “Federal law prohibits employers from retaliating against or interfering with employees’ rights secured under the Americans with Disabilities Act, including when they seek a reasonable accommodation.”

Such alleged conduct violates the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which prohibits disability discrimination, retaliation, and interference with rights secured by the ADA. The ADA also requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals with disabilities unless it would cause undue hardship. The EEOC filed suit (EEOC v. Geisinger Health, et al., Case No. 2:21-cv-04294) in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania after first attempting to reach a pre-litigation settlement through its administrative conciliation process.

In addition to the monetary relief, the two-year consent decree settling the suit, entered on Feb. 17, enjoins Geisinger from discriminating on the basis of disability and engaging in retaliation or interference in the future. The decree also requires Geisinger to consider modifications and/or exceptions to existing policies and reassignment without competition as potential forms of accommodations; train all employees and managers on disability discrimination and the ADA; submit periodic reports to the EEOC regarding employees terminated after taking leave; and maintain employment policies, practices and procedures that comply with the ADA and the decree.

For more information on disability discrimination, please visit https://www.eeoc.gov/disability-discrimination.

The EEOC’s Philadelphia District Office has jurisdiction over Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, West Virginia, and parts of New Jersey and Ohio. The legal staff of the EEOC also prosecutes discrimination cases in Washington, D.C. and parts of Virginia.

The EEOC is the sole federal agency authorized to investigate and litigate against businesses and other private sector employers for violations of federal laws prohibiting employment discrimination. For public sector employers, the EEOC shares jurisdiction with the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division. The EEOC also is responsible for coordinating the federal government’s employment antidiscrimination effort. More information about the EEOC is available at www.eeoc.gov.